Recipe: Chicken Enchiladas (eat one casserole and freeze the other!)

I had been experimenting with making my own flour tortillas when I stumbled upon a decent brand of corn tortillas at Earthfare. By “decent” I mean a fairly short list of ingredients that I can pronounce. I looked at all of the options at our local Harris Teeter and could not find anything as simple as “Maria and Ricardo’s” corn tortillas, so I decided it is worth the extra drive to get them from Earthfare.

The ingredients in the corn tortillas are as follows: Ground Corn treated with Lime, Water, Guar Gum. Guar gum is the only highly processed ingredient I could do without, but at least it is last on the list (meaning out of all the ingredients it is what they used the least of). And despite the use of this thickening agent, these corn tortillas still definitely take the prize for being the best store-bought option I could find. So without further ado…

Remove tortillas from oven and switch on broiler to high. Now with most enchilada recipes you have to individually wrap up each tortilla with the filling, but why go through all of that effort when you can just layer it like lasagne and the end result still tastes the same?

Using two separate square or round baking dishes start to distribute the ingredients in the following order:
1. Sauce (spread a little out on bottom of baking dishes)
2. Tortilla layer (I used 2 for each tortilla layer)
3. About a quarter of chicken mixture (for each dish)
4. More sauce
5. Another tortilla layer
6. The rest of chicken mixture
7. Another tortilla layer
8. The last of the sauce
9. Grated cheese on top

Now, for the extra casserole that you are going to freeze go ahead and stop here. Cover it, label it, and throw it into the freezer. When you decide to defrost it later then you can pick things back up with the last broiling step below (after it has been defrosted).

Put the casserole under the broiler and broil for about 5 minutes or until the cheese melts and it is heated through. Serve with cilantro, avocado/guacamole and enjoy!

Yes, I think you could although authentic enchiladas are made with corn instead of flour tortillas. I actually just got some new info about corn tortillas though, and I am probably going to have to change that part of this recipe. As entrenched as we are in this topic these corn tortillas are one of the half a dozen or so things that we did not initially realize are refined. The first ingredient says “ground corn” and apparently it needs to say “whole corn” if it were actually made with the whole grain. Sounds like I am going to have to work on a corn tortilla recipe that I will post soon!

Also, check out this article I just posted that might provide a little more info on cooking with whole grain corn: http:// thefoodillusion.wordpress.com/2010/07/29/understanding-grains-corn- wheat-multi-grain-etc/

I was at an International Market here in GA last night and I found corn tortillas, the brand is El Milagro, with the ingredients of just 3 things:

1- Stone Ground Corn
2- Water
and
3- Lime (Calcium Hydroxide)

It was a pack of 36 for only $1.29

Edit:
Right before posting this I saw you said that it needed to be whole corn. I went on this company’s website, and it says:

‘Quality is a word that is not used lightly at El Milagro. From the beginning, we have always made the best tortillas that we know how. Our corn tortillas start with whole kernel corn that is carefully selected and ground in our plant – we never use pre-processed corn flour.’

So is this a good thing or a bad thing? Do I need to be leery of this brand? Please do let me know if you can! I dont have a phone else I would call the company directly right now to figure this out o.o

I am finding that corn tortillas (and corn flour) are incredibly tricky to figure out if they are whole grain. The problem is that the corn flour often used to make corn tortillas (which is called Masa Harina) does not say “whole grain” on the package, although the whole grains council technically considers it to be whole grain. I don’t see anything that says whole corn or masa harina on the website you sent…did you see this page with contact numbers? http://el-milagro.com/contacts.html

I think I’ve found some corn tortillas that are whole grain…The brand is “Food For Life” and they’re called sprouted corn tortillas. Ingredients list: organic sprouted corn, filtered water, sea salt, lime. I wasn’t sure what “sprouted corn” meant, but from what I’ve read it seems like it’s whole grain. Have you come across this in your research at all??

I’ve come across the sprouted grain options as well (although not the corn ones…just wheat) and they do appear to be whole grain. Did you find the corn tortillas in the freezer section with their other stuff? Also, here is an informative article on the Whole Grains Council website about sprouted grains: http://www.wholegrainscouncil.org/whole-grains-101/sprouted-whole-grains